Opinion | Dead Athletes. Empty Stands. Billions to Keep Horse Racing Alive.

One by one, the horses trot up the ramp and onto the track, pulling single-seat chariots behind them.Their drivers, dressed in garish green and bright pink silks, hop into position.

Together, they begin to build up speed as they head into the setting sun.The clip-clop of their hooves hitting the track rises to a cacophony.

“And they’re off,” the announcer says.The gates swing forward, and the race begins.Back in the day, when horse racing was the only legal form of gambling in New York State, 20,000 or more people would jam the stands at Yonkers Raceway, cheering wildly as the horses ran their mile-long course.

But on this day, despite the beautiful July weather, just a few dozen spectators hang around, slumped into faded orange seats along a chain-link fence.Even with online betting, the racetrack takes in less than one-fortieth of what it would have at the sport’s peak.

So the horses take their two laps, head back down the runway and exit the track to something near silence.It’s a lonely time to be a racing fan.For those who own the horses, though, things aren’t so bad.

Payouts for winners — the purses — are tremendous, bringing in investors with “both fists full of money,” said Joe Faraldo, the president of the Standardbred Owners Association of New York.Yonkers has purses that are among the largest of any racetrack of its kind, and it still has millions of dollars left over.If that doesn’t seem to add up, blame a strange and very lucrative arrangement crafted by interests in the horse racing industry (which includes harness racing and its higher-profile sister sport, thoroughbred racing).

Back in 2001, when New York State agreed to hand out new licenses to operate slot machines, the racing crowd won an agreement that a chunk of the proceeds would go to them.At the Yonkers track, the adjacent casino was doing enough business to generate around $600 million during the last fiscal year.About sixty million of it went to pay out those pur...